The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

by Gardner Dozois

  “The technology isn’t that good. People who don’t wear spectacles don’t like wearing them, and people who do don’t like having to fix another set over the top of their prescription lenses. Ten percent of people can’t see the effect anyway. Still, whizz bang, latest thing.

  “We’re a small production company. We don’t like being at the beck and call of some inflated ego talking poolside in Malibu. Particularly Lynne. Her ancestors were so scary the Romans built a ten metre wall to keep them in. So, to cut to the chase, we invested – well, she invested – in technology. We are miles ahead of the game. We can now deliver a better experience in your sitting room than you’ll ever get in a cinema.”

  Selina paces. “So how does that relate to these poor dead women?” she asks.

  “We can generate direct brain stimulation to the audience. You can live it, feel it, and experience it emotionally. So we can create this, we borrow the brains of our actors – with their full agreement. We inject them with some harmless nano and similar equipment to this sets up a kind of quantum entanglement. We use some of their brain centres without them being aware.”

  “How do you know it’s harmless?” the pathologist demands.

  “We’ve done animal trials, human trials – it has no effect.”

  “Does that cause the blue colouration?”

  “Probably. After exposure to air.”

  “Sunil, I’ll believe you for now, but you may have to prove that to the Examining Magistrate.”

  “Fine. Now – we should not wait too long.”

  Selina gestures to the equipment. “Describe,” she says.

  Sunil presses some buttons on the console. The light in the translucent cube flickers. “I’m attempting to re-entangle the nano,” he says. “I’m recording these data for the report.” Suddenly the segments of brain tissue appear like a model in the cube. He flicks a switch, and false colour marks some regions in red and orange. “The visual centres are destroyed,” he says. “The nano particles store short-term information in a buffer for about ten seconds before loss of entanglement. It looks to me like we may have something coherent in the superior temporal gyrus region. Auditory processing. This may take some time to extract.”

  “How much time?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Coffee?” she asks.

  INT. CORFU – POLICE HQ – DAY

  The Examining Magistrate is the tough sixty-year-old son of a Corfiot fisherman. He fought his way up against the power of the handful of wealthy families which have controlled large sections of the island for hundreds of years. Panyotis is not afraid of anybody – not even Lynne. He looks around the people in the conference room – Dimitris, Lynne, Danny, Jack, Sunil, Selina, and assorted detectives, sip water and await his words.

  “This is a Greek matter. I accept that two British nationals have died, but that does not mean that a film company can become part of the investigation. Lieutenant Koukoulades – please explain.”

  Spiros is wishing he were anywhere else. “Magistrate,” he says, “I agree with you, but these young women were unusually famous.” He leafs through a stack of tabloids on the table with headlines like “Goodnight Angel” and “Amber Falls to Her Death.” “The film company has information that may be important to the investigation and for now at least I believe we should listen to what they have to say.”

  The magistrate rests his chin on his fist and looks at Lynne. “Make your case,” he says.

  Is the power of the Glasgow stare up to the power of the magistrate’s dangerous dark eyes? She sucks in a breath and says, “Several of our key actors died within minutes of each other. Two could be a coincidence, sir, but five or six? I think not.” It’s the first time she’s used the word sir in thirty years. “I hope you will agree that there is prima facie evidence of a conspiracy. We are cooperating closely with the authorities in several countries to identify the source of this murderous attack. We have technology which may assist the investigation, and we have placed it at your disposal.”

  “I’m prepared to listen,” the magistrate says, slowly, “but I doubt if any unproven technology will be permitted in court. Doctor Mariatos has also made it clear to me that your secret technology might have been a causative factor in the deaths of these people. She has professionally and properly given way as senior scientific officer to two senior forensic pathologists from Athens, who should be arriving at the airport within the hour.”

  “Our system is highly confidential!” Lynne says forcefully.

  “This may be a murder investigation. I will decide what is confidential. Doctor Mariatos – please proceed.”

  Selina stands at the end of the table and outlines the forensic analysis of the bodies of Amber and Angel. The results are consistent with a long fall and an overdose of sleeping pills. However, she will want to add to this after Sunil’s evidence. She then formally seeks the Examining Magistrate’s permission to allow Sunil Gupta to display the results of his tests. He nods.

  Sunil inserts a disc into the Blu-ray player and coughs nervously. “I understand the magistrate’s scepticism of unproven technology. What we have done today has never been done before. It’s a side effect of the way we can interact with our actors’ brains.

  “We have a poor quality sound retrieval of the last ten seconds of Julia Simpson’s life.” He presses the remote. There’s the sound of a petrol engine, then a bumping noise, a second louder metallic screech, a woman gasping, and a scream. The magistrate turns to Spiros and raises his eyebrows.

  “Magistrate, we have found traces of impacted black car enamel paint on the left rear of the dune buggy consistent with an impact from behind.”

  The magistrate makes a continue gesture to Sunil. “We have a rather poor snapshot of the last few seconds of Angel Argent – Audrey Turner. To show this I will have to use our new immersive technology, which we call InifiniDy. Initially I will play it at fifty percent opacity – then, perhaps, at full intensity.” Sunil gestures at the black box which sits on a table near the front of the room. The chairs, tables, and assembled people become translucent. They are all seemingly in the equally translucent kitchen of apartment 101 in Agios Stefanos. They feel overwhelming terror and sadness. A dark figure stands before them silhouetted by golden evening sun from the window, and they feel a cold spray in their nostrils. An American voice says “Goodnight Angel,” and the superposed scenes cross-fade back to the police room. There’s a long pause, then Sunil asks, “Shall I play it at full intensity?”

  “I think not,” the magistrate says. “That seems to be adequately intense for me. Selina Maria?”

  She’s surprised at his use of her Christian name. He’s obviously disturbed. “There are possible indications of methyl alcohol effects in the nasal tissue. I have sent samples by air to Athens for mass spectroscopy. Such things are very difficult to establish but it is possible that a propellant aerosol spray could have been used in this case.”

  The magistrate sits back in his chair. “Many years ago,” he says, “when I was young I was in a scene in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only made in the streets of Kerkyra, here. I was a good-looking – no, very good-looking – young man walking down a narrow passage as Roger Moore came by. We did it many times. Once, I looked into the camera, which I had been told never to do, and they shouted at me. The lighting was adjusted frequently, while we stood around. Hundreds of people were involved. I tell you this because as a young man I realized that when I see something in the cinema it is a carefully crafted icon. What you have shown me may be true. But it may be a lie. Your trade is deceit. I rely on my police officers and doctors. The bodies will not be buried or repatriated until I say they may.”

  “Nor cremated?” Lynne asks.

  “We do not burn bodies in Greece,” says the magistrate. “We live in hope of the resurrection.”

  He stands. They all stand. He walks out. There’s a pause and then a blinding flash. Alexandros comes through the door like a pantomime demon a
rriving onstage. He’s very good-looking, Alexandros. The day outside is ripped with a deafening tearing sound and then the deep echoing crack of thunder rattles the windows. The sky cuts instantly from blue to slate grey and huge raindrops waterfall down the glass. It doesn’t drizzle much in the Ionian Islands – you’re either in bright sunshine or underwater. Heralded by Zeus, the god of thunder, Alexandros walks across to Spiros and whispers in his ear. Lynne stares at him. He’s actually having a physical effect on her.

  Spiros says, “Please excuse me,” and he and Alexandros leave the room.

  “Latest?” Lynne asks Danny. He’s had a tablet on his lap throughout the meeting. “We’ve got data from some bodies,” he says. “We couldn’t get any cooperation in Kiev. We’ve lost Tarquin to a very efficient Russian-built crematorium.”

  INT. CORFU – POLICE HQ OFFICE – DAY

  Alexandros lays half a dozen photographs on Spiros’s desk. “I’ve got all the pictures I could from the tourists on buses in Paleo that afternoon.”

  A lean ginger-haired man is crouching on the perimeter of The Golden Fox pool. He is raising a top-range Canon EOS digital SLR camera towards his face. Amber Holiday stands by the pool, shaking water droplets off her perfect body. Flip pictures. Tourists are climbing off a bus, mugging into the camera, and in the background there’s a black 4 × 4. Amber is just visible through a taverna window climbing into the dune buggy and a lean man with a hint of red hair is walking through the car park.

  “We’ve checked the number plate. Car hire firm at the harbour. He paid cash. Given the timing he was probably off the ferry from Brindisi. We’re checking the CCTV in the harbour.”

  “Where’s the car?”

  “No trace.”

  Spiros picks up the picture of the man with the camera and walks out.

  INT. CORFU – CORRIDOR POLICE HQ – DAY

  Spiros fills a cup of water from the drinks machine in the corridor and hands it to Danny. He draws one for himself, and then reaches into his inside jacket pocket and takes out the picture of the photographer. “I didn’t show you this,” he says. “Any ideas?”

  Danny examines the picture, hands it back to Spiros, and says, “Never seen him before. May I have a copy?” Spiros thinks about it and nods.

  INT. CORFU – TOWN TAVERNA – NIGHT

  Selina has scrubbed up well and she leans across the table towards Sunil. She’s not beautiful. She has a strong nose and dense black eyebrows, but they’re framed with a burst of wavy dark-brown hair. They’ve just demolished dolmades, small fish, green beans in tomato and garlic sauce, and a pile of charcoal-grilled lamb chops. “Where were you born?” she asks.

  Sunil laughs. “Croydon,” he says. “It’s a suburb in south London. It wasn’t Bombay. Lipame.”

  “Good try,” she says. “It’s a bit sad if your first Greek word is sorry. But let’s get it right. It’s not quite right the way you said it. It’s lee-PAH-may! Go on!” When she repeats the middle syllable her lips open wide. The waiter brings another jug of wine and puts it on the table. Sunil practises the word after her. Several times.

  “I have a little house,” she says. “It’s up in the hills towards Temploni. It’s quite cool at night.” She giggles. “I’ve got three goats and six chickens and I am useless at looking after them. My vegetables die. Every year I have big plans for my vegetables and by July they are dead. That’s my life. At work I try very hard to keep people alive, and when I get home the sun has roasted the peppers to death. The goats despise me. Have you ever kept goats?”

  Sunil admits that although there may be vast herds of goats in Croydon, he’s never come across them.

  “Goats are very intelligent,” Selina says. “Sheep – you just eat. Goats – you know there’s consciousness there. They’re funny. They’re adapted to survive. You should meet my goats.”

  Sunil puts his hand across the table. She puts hers over his. “I would very much like to meet your goats,” he says. She nods, and calls “To logoriasmo, parakolo!” to the waiter. Sunil is making a neat pile of Euros on the table when Jack walks in.

  Directors come in two flavours – charm or totalitarian dictator. Jack is charm. “Selina,” he says, “you are looking stunning tonight. Sunil, the plane is leaving in two hours. Sorry to break up the party.”

  Sunil sees her eyes look down and her shoulders slump. “Sorry, Jack, not possible,” he says. “We’re running a parametric vector equalization test on the corpses. It won’t be finished until around eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. If we interrupt it we’ll scramble the data.”

  “Lynne’s not going to be happy,” Jack says.

  “Send the plane back tomorrow. We’ll have the equipment packed, at the airport, and ready to go at fourteen hundred hours.”

  Jack thinks for a few seconds and nods. “Okay,” he says, “it’s your gig. But the flight costs come off your budget, not mine. Goodnight, Selina.” He walks out.

  The brown eyes lift and focus on Sunil’s. “What exactly is a parametric vector equalization test?” she asks.

  “Haven’t got the faintest idea,” he says. “I think we’ll have to ask the goats.”

  INT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS—DAY

  Lynne and Danny are sitting in his office in the security centre looking at the pictures of a ginger-haired man holding a camera. “Spiros sent the pictures to Interpol,” he says. “They’re getting nowhere, but I have some friends who can dig a little deeper. His name is usually Adrian Kopp, but he has a dozen passports. He’s a freelance. Ex-CIA.”

  Danny swivels his chair around. “We’ve hacked everything we can hack. We still can’t find out who’s doing this to us. So far we haven’t found this man, let alone the others.”

  “What others?”

  “There have to be four or five at least. Times of death, Lynne. Nobody can get from Corfu to Kiev in an hour. This one’s our only lead so far.”

  INT. UNIVERSA STUDIOS – LOS ANGELES – DAY

  The man who sometimes calls himself Adrian Kopp is wearing cut-off jeans and a white T-shirt with a blue Texan university logo. He has his feet up on the chair in front of him. “That’s a hundred percent hit rate,” he says. “Worth the bonus, I think. I’ve put them back at least six months – maybe a year. They’re going nowhere, and you’ll be there first.”

  The balding man sitting behind his very big desk nods and smiles.

  INT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS – DAY

  Aluminium carry cases are stacked up in the computing centre. The portable units are laid out on a bench and connected to a central bay with thick cables. Sunil stands behind his technical team. Jack stands behind him. Progress bars crawl across screens as petabytes of data move between the links.

  Lynne walks in. “Is it going to work?” she asks.

  Sunil takes a fifty-pence piece from his pocket, flips it into the air, catches it on the back of his hand, and examines it. “Maybe,” he says.

  “Because if it doesn’t,” Lynne adds, “we’re in deep shit.”

  FAST FORWARD two hours. The progress bars hit 100%. It gets quieter as the CPU fans in the portable units wind down to idle. Sunil stretches his back and says quietly to his team, “That’s all the material we’ve got. Move it into the simulators very carefully, one actor at a time. Start with Amber – she’s our worst-case scenario.”

  What was flesh, what ate, what breathed, what read books and made love is now a collection of electron cloud superimpositions. Maybe it always was. Golden hair is numbers. Blue eyes are arrays of colour-spectrum frequencies. Fear and affection are probabilities. The computers will now attempt to act the actors.

  INT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS – STUDIO 3 – DAY

  Jack is floating. Jack is the camera. Amber walks down the street with snow-flakes blowing around her hair. Lynne sits beside Jack in the cradle. Neither of them is smiling. There is a faint, subtle something about Amber that doesn’t quite flow. Sunil and his team are tweaking settings but generally making things worse.

  They t
ry a scene with the simulacra of each of their dead actors. Nothing works. They’re looking at a brilliant display of technology and a cold and inadequate experience. This time the nymphs have really departed.

  “So,” Lynne says. “We’ve got three-quarters of a movie we have no hope of finishing. Terrific! Got any ideas?”

  “Only one,” Jack says. “Get the writers in. I’ve put together the sequences that work. Maybe they can plot around them.”

  “What are we going to do for actors?”

  “Get some new ones.”

  Lynne sighs. “It took five months to get the other brains functioning. We don’t have five months. The money will walk. We have to do something . . . drastic.”

  INT. PINEWOOD STUDIOS – SECURITY – DAY

  Danny indeed has friends. There isn’t a film studio in the world that isn’t laced with security cameras. In Vladivostok there’s a team of high-powered ex-Soviet space industry computer experts with some very cute image-enhancement software, top-notch hacking skills, and a considerable fondness for dollars.

  He’s looking at video of a service area in an obscure corner of Universa Studios in Los Angeles. A white van with a ladder strapped to the top pulls up and a ginger-haired man steps out. A red circle appears around his face and the video slows to about one frame every two seconds. Inside the circle the fuzzy image clarifies. There’s no doubt. Adrian Kopp carries a tool bag into the building, and the door shuts behind him.

  Danny punches keys on his computer at the same time as he’s initiating a connection on a quantum-encrypted handset. It’s answered immediately. “The money is going into your account . . . now. I’ll wait till you confirm. (TWO BEATS) Pleasure. How good is the firewall at Universa?”